The general question is: How behind are packages being packaged in Ubuntu? I know that this depends on the package and a ton of things, but I just want to get a sense of (stable vs. cutting edge--is there a good balance of both?) Ultimately, I want a system that fast, reliable, up-to-date, and easy to maintain.
I find myself debating whether to go with minimal Ubuntu, Arch Linux, or Slackware. I did some reading and realize that Ubuntu and Slackware are considered stable while Arch Linux is considered bleeding edge (yes, I realize Arch and Slackware require more work to maintain) but never to what extent. For example, I don't mind at all spending a ton of time setting things up since it is a one-time process, but I don't want to spend more than say 10 minutes a month for maintenance and ensuring things to work. From what I've read, Arch actually doesn't require much.
I'm not sure how behind the packages in Ubuntu/Slackware are to warrant me switching to another distro. I'm also not sure how stable Arch Linux is to warrant me to switching to a cutting/bleeding-edge distro for up-to-date stable packages (NOT anything newer, I don't want bleeding edge). I know that Arch has tests its packages too, but people often say "expect breakage".
Thanks!
Some notes:
- Don't recommend Ubuntu simply because Arch/Slackware requires a higher level of understanding to make it work. I intend to read documentations.
- I get the sense that Canonical is in the direction of "my way or the highway" and I really align with the Arch Way, but these are just philosophies that shouldn't have too much say in choosing a distro.
- Package management is important to me in sense that the system is tidy. For now, I have avoided PPAs on Ubuntu for this reason (apt-pinning is a solution but I don't know if it's a complete solution--if it is, I would have no problems with PPAs and actually use them).
- I like a system where it is bloat-free and has what I want, perhaps building from the base up. I don't know if this would necessarily provide me better performance though. I think Slackware kind of goes against this, but it's not a big deal especially because I heard Slackware is quite optimized somehow.
- I was originally set on Arch, but there are people telling me "expect breakage", "never update before an important event because of this" , "too much work to maintain when I just want to get things done" , and highlighting the disadvantages of a rolling-distro. This while I read things like "the only time Arch has broken for me was cause of my mistake in 3 years of using it" , "maintaining Arch takes like 5 minutes a month" , "as long as you subscribe to Arch news and don't do crazy stuff, Arch is as stable as any distro".
- I intend on being a programmer/doing software engineering if that matters. Maybe it means I don't want to spend too much time maintaining (not setting) the OS when I've got other things to do.
Thanks once again.
There are so many Linux distros, and they all look good, but which one is right for me?
That is a question that almost all new Linux users ask. Really, it just depends on you. What do you want to use it for? I’ll go through a brief rundown of some mainstream Linux distros, and maybe from there you can make up your mind. I’ll sort by the most popular ones.
Ubuntu
I don’t particularly care for Ubuntu for a few reasons: It is ad supported because they lack support from users, It comes with spyware pre-installed, and they try to act like they’re the best despite all that. A lot of people who have been using Ubuntu for a while don’t care for the new UI that they’ve installed, which is the defacto option for Ubuntu. Not only that, but they, unlike any other distro, have a very distinct security hole: a guest session that can be accessed without a password. NOT the best for use...in really any environment.
But, to their credit, they’ve got the largest software repository second only to Debian, even though there’s a lot of applications that do the same exact thing. Their UI is very polished considering that they released it just in 2011. And their forums have a ton of helpful Ubuntu users.
Linux Mint
LM is pretty much just like Ubuntu, only instead of everything being either purple or orange, it’s green or white. Much like Ubuntu, they have their own UI, and their own Software Center.. But, because they are rooted in Ubuntu (http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint) they may inherit some of Ubuntu’s problems. You guess which ones.
Fedora
Of them all, Fedora is probably the most user friendly, except for the fact that they use cutting edge packages that may/may not be 100% stable, and Fedora is making a change as of 21 to focus more on stability. (Personally, I’ve had very few issues with stability, and the issues I come accross seem to apply to most distors) Other than that, it’s a great distro, asthetically pleasing, Fedora comes standard with GNOME Boxes (lets you run another OS within Fedora, like Windows), an app store like thingy, and many nice GNOME applications.. Fedora is suitable for most any machine, including tablets and hybrids like the Lenovo Yoga, thanks to GNOME.
Debian
Debian is really in a world of their own. In an effort to focus on stability, they sacrifice reasonably up-to-date software. If you have old hardware that was supported, but is not now, Debian is for you.
Debian also has a lot of software, but I’ve had trouble with broken packages, dependencies completely missing, and whatnot.
openSUSE
Like Linux Mint, everything in openSUSE is green. Unlike Linux Mint, openSUSE is rock stable, mature, and has great avenues for customizing it to your specific needs, using the GUI. Most everything configurable is made much easier with YAST, rather than using the command line. openSUSE features something no other distro has: a one-click install for applications. Ubuntu is trying to copy it...good luck with that. And, like Debian, they've got most every package under the sun...which can be good and bad at the same time. The packages in openSUSE are complete, no missing dependencies from what I can see. The only problem I can see with it is that WiFi drivers and nonfree codecs can be a pain.
Now the reason you're reading this is to get an idea of what's out there as far as Linux goes. But maybe you haven't thought about Unix as a viable option.
Solaris
If you have an i386 arch processor, you can forget trying to boot up with Solaris 11. But once you get it running on an x86_64 machine, it's pretty decent, considering that it is an enterprise OS. It's stable. It's fast. And it has some proprietary Oracle tools to help administrate it, much like YAST on openSUSE. Solaris is targeted at being a workstation OS, so you won’t find things like games in abundance in it. Considering what it is, Solaris rocks.
What I did in windows was create images of my drive and restore them.
in linux I am running
Code:
rsync -aAXv --exclude={"/home/*","/dev/*","/proc/*","/sys/*","/tmp/*","/run/*","/mnt/*","/media/*","/lost+found"} /* /path/to/backup/folder
and this creates a folder for me with all my files, and apparently saves meta data like permissions and paths...
Since I'm using arch and things break sometimes,I'm booted into a CLI with errors and cannot figure my way out since I'm a noob... would I be able to just delete my entire root and replace it with the rsync backup without a problem?
OK so I bought a dell precision workstation m3800 that came installed with Ubuntu. I want to switch out the hdd with a ssd and put Arch OS on there. It has no optical drive to install with a CD, so my question is if I can use a usb external optical device to install arch, and what problems might I run into?
I was looking into Slackware because a very talented teaching assistant at my school uses Slackware
And when we asked our UNIX professor for a recommendation on distro he recommended Ubuntu, and if we google around for five minutes we all can see that Ubuntu is the most popular distro.
I tried Mint and it was fast, smooth and a sweet pleasure.
I am not worried about screwing things up on my laptop, which already has Windows 8 and some important data, because if something goes wrong and my laptop can't even start, I can run Knoppix in USB stick to log on.
Any important tips for Linux rookies?
I have setup a dual boot system with Fedora 21 and Arch Linux. The problem is that Fedora doesn't see my encrypted Arch installation. The installations are on separate partitions and do not share anything apart from hard disk space. I have run the following commands as root in Fedora:
Code:
grub2-install /dev/sda
Code:
os-prober
Code:
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
When I rebooted, Fedora was the only OS entry showing in the GRUB menu.
There was a suggestion from one of the members of the Arch forums that I should write the entry myself into /etc/grub.d/40_custom and then re-build the grub configuration or take the Arch entry from Arch's /boot/grub/grub.cfg and just paste it into the 40_custom in Fedora and rebuild.
How do I boot from a live Arch USB stick into the installed Arch and do as stated above? How would it work? Thanks in advance for your replies.
Hi! I have a failing disk and the kernel messages are the following:
Code:
Απρ 01 15:07:02 Arch kernel: ata1: lost interrupt (Status 0x50)
Απρ 01 15:07:03 Arch kernel: ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
Απρ 01 15:07:03 Arch kernel: ata1.00: failed command: WRITE DMA
Απρ 01 15:07:03 Arch kernel: ata1.00: cmd ca/00:08:20:32:6a/00:00:00:00:00/e4 tag 0 dma 4096 out
res 40/00:00:4b:4f:c2/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
Απρ 01 15:07:03 Arch kernel: ata1.00: status: { DRDY }
Απρ 01 15:07:03 Arch kernel: ata1: soft resetting link
Απρ 01 15:07:03 Arch kernel: ata1.00: LPM support broken, forcing max_power
Απρ 01 15:07:03 Arch kernel: ata1.00: LPM support broken, forcing max_power
Απρ 01 15:07:03 Arch kernel: ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
Απρ 01 15:07:03 Arch kernel: ata1.01: configured for UDMA/133
Απρ 01 15:07:03 Arch kernel: ata1: EH complete
Απρ 01 15:09:19 Arch kernel: ata1: lost interrupt (Status 0x50)
Απρ 01 15:09:20 Arch kernel: ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
Απρ 01 15:09:20 Arch kernel: ata1.00: failed command: READ DMA EXT
Απρ 01 15:09:20 Arch kernel: ata1.00: cmd 25/00:20:e8:b2:fd/00:00:18:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 16384 in
res 40/00:00:4b:4f:c2/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
Απρ 01 15:09:20 Arch kernel: ata1.00: status: { DRDY }
Απρ 01 15:09:20 Arch kernel: ata1: soft resetting link
Απρ 01 15:09:20 Arch kernel: ata1.00: LPM support broken, forcing max_power
Απρ 01 15:09:20 Arch kernel: ata1.00: LPM support broken, forcing max_power
Απρ 01 15:09:20 Arch kernel: ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
Απρ 01 15:09:20 Arch kernel: ata1.01: configured for UDMA/133
Απρ 01 15:09:20 Arch kernel: ata1: EH complete
I have 2 disks: sda, sdb. Which disk is it referring to?
Thanks a lot
I've just installed Arch, and Installed and configured openbox and gnome terminal. Openbox starts, firefox works, but when I try to start gnome terminal, I curser spins for a moment and then it doesnt load.
I've tried to find a resolution to this but I'm not seeing much relevant to this specific scenerio. Also, this is my first time ever installing Arch, or any distro without a graphic installer or a kickstart script. My experience is pretty basic. I've used ubuntu/mint/centos for quite a while but figured this will be a good way to get me learning.
After I post this I am going to reboot to get back to command line and look at the installation and maybe install another terminal and see if this makes much a difference.
Hello all,
I was screwin' around with Arch Linux. I'm interested in it but not more interested than my Kubuntu running KDStudio.
I didn't realize how much prep. their is and the fact that Arch does no prep. Anyway, I stopped trying to get it to run when I realized I had to pre-partition and set up a swap.
Now however grub does not boot into the KDE desktop. It boots into Kubuntu but with no desktop.
Does anyone know how to fix this, I would not like to have to re-install the whole system. I think there must be a fix, I'm not sure exactly what Arch did, gparted doesn't show anything.
Hi, I'm a newbie. I've moved from windows 8.1 to Slackware a coupe days. They said If I want to know deeper about computer, I have to use one of Linux distro. So Slackware is very basic, that's why I try it. I used use Ubuntu a few time before but Slackware which it's harder. I begin search in the internet about driving the distro.
My language is not English. I used Lingoes in Windows. Now I'm lookin for same one. I need a help for downloading, installing software, maybe step by step because I don't have much experience at Linux in common.
Hi. I've installed Arch Linux on a Wandboard running Logitech Media Server (LMS). LMS needs to read my music files off of a NAS network share. I can't figure out how to mount that network share.
I was told by someone who has a similar NAS to make the following entry in etc/fstab:
//192.168.10.15/media/Music /mnt/netdrive cifs noauto,x-systemd.automount,user=nobody,password="",iocharse t=utf8,noperm,nounix,nobrl 0 0
But when I start LMS and point it to /mnt/netdrive, my media/Music folder isn't shown. Is there a problem with the way I'm trying to mount the network share?
I've tried using "root" and "admin" as username and the admin password of the NAS as password, but still no luck. I've tried mounting the share manually, but I get a "permission denied" error.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.